


i miss you seven

by honeykaspbrak



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst, Canon Divergence, Complicated Emotions, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex, Smut, army boy! ian, dirty talking, doesnt follow the show’s plot, ian is meant to be like ?? 16 here, ian’s away and mickey misses him, mick doesn’t ever fucking sleep, mickey and carl are the best together that’s just facts, mickey is tired and annoyed, mickey isn’t good with talking about it, mickey needs to get laid, some miscommunication, someone help them figure their shit out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 01:43:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeykaspbrak/pseuds/honeykaspbrak
Summary: he sits on his front porch, work boots on but untied and a square dangling from between his lips. fucking gallagher is probably running obstacle courses right now, maybe shooting rifles into the sunset, most likely sucking off his bunk mate behind the mess hall.mickey thinks about him a lot while he’s gone, but doesn’t miss him. his cock, sure, but not his petulance or his stubbornness or his wide-eyed, virginal outer layer that mickey has to take the time to undo with his teeth and fists before ian will shift into something mickey recognizes and fucking plow him.he thinks about ian’s hands around a gun while he jerks off over the toilet at night with his shirt pulled up and stuffed in his mouth, but he doesn’t miss him. that’s bullshit.





	i miss you seven

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write some long distance gallavich so here you guys go. poor mickey. someone just needs to shake him and tell him he can have FEELINGS, damnit. 
> 
> title is from the song _seven_ by the long winters. i hope you all enjoy!

god. fuck. jesus. there’s light filtering in from the broken window that mandy has reenforced half-heartedly with cardboard, making it so mickey can’t fall asleep even though his eyes are so heavy that they feel like fucking anchors sitting in the middle of his face. he rolls over and stuffs his head into his rank pillow, but then he just can’t fucking breathe, and is in no better position than he was at the beginning. he thrashes around in his sweaty sheets for another twenty minutes, until he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s not getting any sleep til he’s back from his night shift, and rolls out of bed. 

he needs to piss, but it’s one of those days where even pissing feels like too much fucking work to bother with. he needs a smoke. 

he sits on his front porch, work boots on but untied and a square dangling from between his lips. fucking gallagher is probably running obstacle courses right now, maybe shooting rifles into the sunset, most likely sucking off his bunk mate behind the mess hall. 

mickey thinks about him a lot while he’s gone, but doesn’t miss him. his cock, sure, but not his petulance or his stubbornness or his wide-eyed, virginal outer layer that mickey has to take the time to undo with his teeth and fists before ian will shift into something mickey recognizes and fucking plow him. 

he thinks about ian’s hands around a gun while he jerks off over the toilet at night with his shirt pulled up and stuffed in his mouth, but he doesn’t miss him. that’s bullshit. 

it’s late afternoon, an unusually hot-as-balls spring day at the end of march. which means, give or take, a month and a half until gallagher’s fancy-ass, scholarshipped training program spits him back out for another summer wasting away in the hood. not that anyone’s counting. 

as mickey’s absolutely stupid, tragic luck would have it, he looks up from his mangled lighter (mandy kicked it in the road during an argument and a car ran over it - still works, though) to see carl gallagher trudging along the sidewalk two doors down. mickey contemplates just standing up and going inside before they have to have the conversation that he knows is impending, but then carl has spotted him and is waving. 

he must be nine or ten now, but mickey has known him since he was like two months old. when carl smiles at him, mickey can see that he’s missing one of his front teeth. 

“hi, mickey!” mickey doesn’t remember being that cheerful at carl’s age, or ever really, but maybe he was. it always seems like the little gallaghers have endless fonts of energy that make conversation with them absolutely draining. mickey prefers to avoid it altogether. 

that annoys ian. (“you don’t have the time of day to make nice with my family?” “shut the fuck up, gallagher, it’s not like we’re dating, why should i bother.”) mickey brushes that off, but it always makes him feel weirdly guilty. maybe that’s why he raises his hand in a halfhearted wave as carl bounds up the front steps and plops down next to him. 

the kid is holding some sort of action figure that looks like, _maybe_ , it was once spider-man, but seems to have been melted over most of one side into a congealed blob. (ian, pacing in mickey’s living room: “and we don’t know why he’s acting out, counselor says it’s probably the _unstable family situation_ , but, fuck, i don’t know how to make anything more _stable_.”)

“my brother says you smell like shit but i don’t notice anything.” _jesus_. mickey always forgets how goddamn candid little kids are. he misses being able to get away with that. 

“is that right? which brother?” if carl says ian, it’s not like mickey is gonna be angry. it’s not like ian owes him any-

“lip.” carl says, twisting the less-deformed arm on peter-parker-in-acid. “he’s a douche, that’s what fiona says. i dunno. he’s smart, you know.” 

“he is a douche.” mickey replies, feeling noticeably relieved. “but, yeah, smart.”

“fiona says he’ll go to college. you going to college?” it sort of knocks mickey back a few steps. no one has shown the slightest bit of interest in his future in _years_ , let alone the kind of interest that paints him as someone who could possibly go to college. 

“nah. gotta stay here and work.” carl keeps looking over sideways at mickey’s cigarette, like he wants a drag but is too scared to ask. mickey debates with himself for a second, but, god, he was smoking at eight years old and carl has spent a lifetime inhaling his brother’s secondhand smoke in that cramped room they all share. mickey passes him the cig. 

“thanks!” carl says, like it’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to him. mickey can’t help but smile out over the street a little bit. of all the gallagher siblings besides ian, carl is definitely the one he’d choose to hang out with if forced. 

mickey sort of half-expects him to choke, but he takes a few drags like a pro and hands the smoke back over. 

“where d’ya work?” carl asks, as if every facet of mickey’s life is just incredibly interesting to him. the attention is sort of nice, actually. 

“englemann’s.” carl’s face immediately lights up with recognition. 

“the burger place? cool!” mickey shrugs, still a little bit bewildered by the _energy_. and there’s something he wants to ask carl that his stubborn-ass lips can’t seem to form. 

then the kid is standing up, scooping up his toy, and jumping down the front steps two at a time. “see ya, mickey.” his head is shaved and mickey can see the spots in the back where whoever did it went too short. his scalp is sunburned. 

“hold up, carl.” he stops on the sidewalk, looks back with these expectant kid eyes. ah, fuck. no way around it now. “you heard from ian?” 

“not for like two weeks. he’s busy. but he wrote.” two weeks. mickey hasn’t heard anything from him in two _months_. he has the sole letter ian sent him, long and smudged in his sloppy handwriting, hidden between his mattress and bed frame. he couldn’t ever bring himself to respond. something in him shut down every time he tried to sit with a pen and tell ian the things he wants to. 

so it’s probably his fault ian hasn’t tried to contact him again. but, god, mickey doesn’t do well with words. he does well with his fists and his body and his lips but not with words. 

“bye, mickey.” carl skips off down the street and leaves mickey there on his porch with a fucked-up heaviness in his chest. 

 

work that night is slow and shitty, and mickey burns the knuckles of his right hand on a grease fryer and doesn’t clock out when he stomps out back to smoke and shotgun the warm beer he stuck in his locker before his shift. he’s tired and laggy, like his fucking software needs updating. 

he’s thinking about the letter. thinking about ian. which fucking _sucks_ , because when he isn’t actively thinking about ian he can pretend the whole thing doesn’t exist. and then it doesn’t feel so much like something’s missing. 

it’s just that mickey needs to get laid, really. he hadn’t made it a _plan_ to not sleep with anyone while ian was gone, but that’s how it’s been working out. he knows full well that gallagher hasn’t been keeping his dick to himself up there. his letter told mickey that he’d _slept with some people_ , as if he was confessing a sin at church, or as if he and mickey don’t keep secrets from each other, followed by an absolutely faggy line about _hoping mickey wasn’t hurt by that_. god. the whole thing makes him want to claw his eyes out. 

“milkovich!” freddie perkins yells through the break room window, as if englemann’s is busy enough at one thirty in the morning to require two people behind the counter. mickey flips him off without looking back, but snuffs out his cigarette and gets up anyways. 

he’s got a fucking joke of a life. 

 

mandy is awake, for some reason, when he gets home after three with twenty hours of sleeplessness weighing on his brain and his reddened knuckles stinging. she’s sitting cross-legged on the couch with a cup of instant noodles in her lap and a reality show playing on one of the three TV channels they get. 

he sits down next to her, hoping that she’ll offer him some noodles so he doesn’t have to make himself anything. 

“hey.” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen. 

“hey.” he says back, and they sit in silence for the next several moments (she does pass the styrofoam container of MSG over to him, and he slurps at it gratefully). 

“oh, mickey.” she says it like she’s suddenly remembered something, her voice scratchy and sleepy. “ian called at, like, eight.” mickey whips his head around to her so fast it’s embarrassing. she’s still watching the screen. 

“yeah?” mickey asks, feigning boredom in the whole situation. pfft, ian gallagher, right? who cares?

“he sounds like he’s doing good. said training kicked his ass today. and it just rains all the time, apparently.” 

“i thought there weren’t any phones there.” he kicks himself internally, because he shouldn’t _know_ that, but he does because ian told him while mickey was eating his ass the night before he skipped town. mandy doesn’t seem to notice. 

“he smuggled his cell in.” her tone is all proud and admiring and a little goopy. “said he missed hearing my voice.” god, that’s _just_ the sort of thing gallagher would say. pussy ass bitch. 

he says that sentiment aloud, and mandy punches him in the arm, almost spilling his soup. 

“he asked about you.” she says, and mickey’s heart just about leaps out of his mouth. _jesus christ. pull it together, milkovich._ he just grunts, in a way that sounds like a question, because he doesn’t trust himself to speak. “he said you should call him back. something about the money he owes you?” 

oh my _god._ fucking quick thinking gallagher. “oh, uh huh.” he doesn’t think he can manage saying anything more. god, he feels like his fucking breathing is giving him away. 

“what does he owe you for?” mandy’s tired, he can hear it in her dragging voice. mickey bites down hard on his lower lip. 

“ah, i, um, bought him a couple cases of beer a while back.” mandy doesn’t question it, thank fuck, and when he looks over at her she’s slipped into mouth-open sleep. 

 

mickey’s cell rings four times, and he’s on the verge of giving up and going to watch porn to clear his mind of gallagher when the line connects. 

“mickey!” ian sounds like he’s laughing. mickey is fucking glad he can’t see his smile, so wide that his dry lips complain. his heart is thrumming the way it did the first time ian put his hand on his inner thigh and mickey almost came in his pants while they watched people get mauled in walking dead reruns. jesus christ.

“gallagher. fuckin’ G.I. joe. it’s been a while.” dammit, ian doesn’t _need_ to be here, because you can hear mickey’s grin in his voice. ian laughs huskily into the phone. god, he sounds good. 

“what’s going on, mick?” _mick_. normally mickey would have it out for him for that but he feels so floppy and boneless, sitting cross-legged and shirtless at the foot of his bed, that he can only manage this helpless little snort of laughter. he’s a fucking mess.

“got home from work like an hour ago. i watched some TV with mandy.” 

“what show?” ian asks, cause he’s that kind of person who wants to know _details_ and mickey used to not be able to stand that but now he’ll comply, sometimes. 

“ah, i think it was _the bachelor_? but like, hella old reruns.” ian makes this little joyful noise that makes mickey’s stomach turn. he loves that dumbass show. 

“i haven’t seen, like, a _scrap_ of pop culture in all the time i’ve been here. i would fucking kill for a, y’know, like a _people_ magazine?” mickey laughs and makes a mental note to pick one up to send him. 

“oh, hey.” mickey says, remembering. he scratches the nails of his left hand over his scalp. his hair is dirty and smells like french fries. “i talked to carl earlier this afternoon.” he hears ian take this excited breath in. he must miss his siblings. 

“yeah? about what?” 

“like... how lip is a douche,” (ian laughs, again, and mickey feels a weird swell of pride) “and where i worked and, um, you.” ian makes this little, soft noise and mickey doesn’t know what it means. “oh, and you know he fucking smokes, right?”

“yeah, unfortunately. it’s lip. i try not to smoke in front of him, but...” 

“it was bound to happen, though.” mickey says because he doesn’t like the sad edge that ian’s voice has taken. 

“yeah.” there’s a long beat of silence where mickey scoots back against the wall and straightens his legs over the width of the bed. he puts a hand on his bare stomach and wishes it was ian’s.

“ian...” he says, then doesn’t say anything else. _i’m sorry i didn’t write you back. i heard this album last week that you would love. mandy misses you. i think about you every time i get off._ he doesn’t say any of it.

“mickey.” ian says, again. his voice has slipped into this weird cadence, breathy and low. 

“hey, how’s training? mandy said you were getting your ass kicked.”

“oh... yeah, it’s fine. hard.” ian breathes out in a huff, and he still sounds _weird_. mickey wonders with a flash of terror if ian’s gonna start crying. “yesterday we had to, ah, crawl through all this mud in this obstacle course, and my arms still hurt from it.” he sounds like he’s just run a mile. mickey feels his brow furrow. 

“ian, you okay? you sound-“ then, oh my god, gallagher fucking _moans_. unmistakably. mickey’s spine straightens involuntarily. “what the _fuck?_ ”

“hmmm...” ian hums into the phone. oh my fucking god. 

“are you... are you _jerking off?_ is that what we’re doing?” confusion and shock are brewing in mickey’s stomach and giving him a fast half-chub. jesus christ. 

“that’s what...” ian grunts, and from the sound of it mickey knows he’s pressing his lips together and half-closing his eyes. holy shit. “... _i’m_ doing.” 

“what the fuck.” mickey says again, under his breath, hand working fast on the button of his cargo shorts. 

“wait, mickey.” ian sounds like he’s stopped, though his breathing is still labored. “it’s okay, right? did i misread the mood?” he sounds so worried that mickey wants to kiss his stupid pussy face. 

“god, gallagher. i’m literally taking off my shorts right now. calm down.” ian lets out this relieved breath/laugh/moan, and then mickey can hear him suck in his breath as he, most likely, gets a fist around his cock again. 

mickey’s never had phone sex. he’s not a fucking _talker_ while he fucks, so it’s got no damn appeal. but listening to ian’s breathy noises may be changing his mind. 

“what’re you doing, mickey?” he sounds so damn _wrecked_. mickey shoves his shorts down to his knees.

“i’m, uh...” he’s no fucking good at dirty talk. the extent of it is him calling gallagher a _fucking cockwhore slut_ as he gets plowed into from behind. “i’m sitting on my bed. with my back against the wall.” ian sighs, like he can imagine the tableau. 

“you touching yourself?” okay. okay. he just needs to answer ian’s questions. he can handle that.

“mhmm.” he murmurs, suddenly shy. “over my boxers.” 

“which boxers?” ian asks, which might be the dumbest fucking question ever asked, but it goes straight to mickey’s dick anyways. 

“they have, uh, fuckin’ stripes on them. i don’t know. blue and black. kind of tight?” mickey feels like he’s in a fucking infomercial. _wear these while you’re jerking off with your not-really-boyfriend who’s currently half a country away! guaranteed talking point!_

“ohhh.” ian slurs, like he knows what mickey’s talking about. he probably does. he’s got a stupidly good memory. 

“what’re you doing? where are you?” mickey has this image in his head of ian in his bunk with like two hundred sleeping trainees around him, but that seems probably inaccurate. ian isn’t fucking _quiet_ when he comes. 

ian takes a breath. mickey gets his dick out of his boxers and wraps a hand around it. _fuck_. his knuckles still ache, but it’s an almost-pleasant kind of hurt now.

“there’s this, _ah_ , room that used to be, like, a supply closet? it’s empty now, but it’s open, and - fuck - you can lock it from the inside.” mickey sees ian leaning up against the wall of a closet, fucking camo or whatever he sleeps in shoved down around his ankles. illuminated only by the light of his phone, head back, mouth open. jesus. 

“you use that a lot?” ian might get off even more regularly than mickey does. he’s _always_ ready to go.

“mmm, most days.” mickey pulls at his dick. there’s a pool in the bottom of his stomach that’s burning hot and hungry. he wants gallagher to suck his fucking cock.

“you’re a fucking slut.” mickey’s voice is low and wrecked. he’s barely even touched himself. 

ian moans, sort of high and keening. jesus, he sounds gorgeous. “yeah, probably. but you like it.” mickey’s cock fucking _twitches_ at that.

“yeah.” mickey breathes. he wishes he had lube but doesn’t want to get off his bed to acquire it. he doesn’t want to stop hearing ian’s husky, fucked-out voice for even a second. “whaddya think about? in the supply closet?”

“you, dumbass.” ian says, and mickey feels this sudden rush of affection for him that turns thick in his throat. “your fucking tattooed hands around my cock. how you look when you suck me off. you, here, getting pounded in this fucking closet.” alright, that’s it. mickey scrambles off his bed, kicking his shorts and boxers off his ankles, and roots through the drawer next to his desk where his lube is hidden way in the back. there we go. “mickey?” ian asks, and mickey realizes he’s gone silent in his desperation to get some fingers in his ass. 

“hi, yeah, i’m here. i’m getting lube.” 

“ _ohhh_.” ian sighs, and it’s such a good, throaty noise that mickey wants to run all the way to the o’hare airport, get on a plane, and fuck ian himself in the mud at his fancy goddamn army camp. “gonna finger yourself?” 

“mhm.” mickey murmurs, flopping back down onto his bed with weak knees. he figured out a while ago that the best position for this is leaning against his pillow, mostly laying down, with his knees apart and tucked up to his chest. he half-considers taking a photo of himself like that on his shitty flip phone and sending it to ian. some fodder for the closet sessions. 

“oh _god_ , mickey.” ian groans, and mickey is suddenly worried that ian’ll come before he even gets a pinky in his ass. he better pick up the pace. “tell me what you’re doing.”

it’s all fucking hard to balance, trying to talk and hold the phone to his ear and slick up his other (non-burnt) hand with lube. mickey feels a spark of frustration go through him, at the fact that ian is so fucking far away and that this is as good as it’s gonna get for another month and a half. but then ian, as if he senses something in mickey’s breathing, says “hey, thank you for this, really,” and he sounds so sweet and genuine that mickey’s anger at the whole goddamn unfair universe sort of floods out of him, leaving him shaky. 

“yeah.” mickey says. “missed this.” it’s as close as he’s gonna get to telling ian he misses him. but ian, goddamn intuitive bastard that he is, probably knows. 

“me too.” 

mickey takes a breath. “okay, i’m gonna do it.” the whole thing feels awkward, the narration. if ian was here he’d just grab mickey’s hand and shove his fingers in. (but he’s not here.) 

“ah, fuck, you look so pretty like that.” ian murmurs, and it makes mickey shiver. the lube is cold against his ass when he presses two fingers into his perineum. 

ian’s wrecked face, lips swollen and sloppy with spit. mickey drags his fingers down, traces them around his asshole. he whispers _fuck_ into the phone. he wishes ian was here, kneeling in front of him, pushing mickey’s knees further apart and watching him do it.

ian’s hands, big and bony with long fingers that freckle on top in the summer. mickey shoves a finger inside himself. it’s cold and quick and takes him by surprise, and he sighs ian’s name. 

“oh, _milkovich_. jesus.” ian sounds strung out. mickey is a little surprised that he hasn’t come yet; he must be taking it slow. “you fucking yourself?” mickey adds a second finger, breathing out in a quick puff like he’s taking a breathalyzer test at the slight stretch. 

“yeah. two fingers.” 

“you can do better than that, mick.” ian says, and it’s so fucking hot that mickey has to stop moving his hand for a few seconds to get it the fuck together. 

“fuck, okay. bossy-ass.” a third finger, and fuck, that stings. mickey jerks his hips up, dick fully hard against his thigh. 

“how are you?” ian asks. mickey grunts in response, and ian laughs softly. “god, i wish i was there. i’d suck your dick. then fuck you.” mickey feels himself go red. it’s one thing to have it happen, one thing to think about it, but hearing ian hiss it into his ear makes him warm with some kind of shame. fuck. this isn’t something they _talk_ about.

“god, yeah. i wish.” the awkwardness of it is all over him now, and he hates that he feels that way. this is hard. it’s hard to be this far away from ian. 

“i miss you.” ian says, and his voice holds all kind of emotion that mickey, distracted with three fingers curling in his ass, can’t begin to decipher. “i miss making you come.” 

mickey gets the phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, the position slightly uncomfortable and will probably lead to a crick in his neck, but then his other hand is free and he can wrap it around his cock. 

“mickey.” ian murmurs, and he’s getting liquidy and talkative like he does when he’s gonna come soon. mickey focuses on that, on the image of ian with his face all screwed up, fisting his cock with his hand, instead of the weirdness of the whole thing. it’s okay. it’s ian. it’s okay. “i bet you look so good. with your knees up how you like it. i miss making you shake.”

mickey thinks about a night the week before ian left, when he ate mickey out with his hands roaming all over his stomach and thighs, spitting onto mickey’s hipbone when he pulled up with this delirious smile. 

“mmmmf.” he groans, can’t really think of anything else to say. he’s harder than he’s been for weeks as he jerks off messy without any real rhythm, fingers out of time in his ass. he’s never been good at matching those things up. ian is. 

“mickey. you gonna come for me?” he probably is, within the next couple minutes. his thighs are tight and trembling. moonlight slats around the cardboard and falls along his left side. he thinks about ian coming home, about pushing him down into bed and not letting him up until sunrise. 

“yeah.” he says, soft. he pulls his fingers out of his ass because his reach isn’t near as good as ian’s and it’s not doing much anymore. he wipes his hand on the sheets and focuses on jacking his dick, the fingers that were in his hole now gripping his thigh. normally that part of him is covered with prints from ian’s mouth, but he’s been away long enough that the hickeys have all faded out. mickey misses it. he misses ian’s teeth in his skin and tells him as much, turning his mouth towards the phone. 

“god.” ian says. there’s a note in his voice that makes mickey think he’s about to come. “so fucking hot, man.” 

“are you close?” mickey asks, instantly regretting the wording. he sounds like he’s in a bad porno. 

“uh huh. yeah.” mickey beats off furiously, eyes squeezed shut and an image of ian’s pretty lips parting over the head of his cock seared into his brain. people don’t come at the same time, that’s a fucking lie, but that doesn’t mean mickey wants to be straggling once ian is finished. 

he might overcompensate, though, because ian says something low and hot and dirty into the phone and mickey’s balls spark and he’s coming by surprise all over his hands and thighs. he’s making this god-awful whining sound, but ian is muttering in his ear that _he sounds so good, so damn slutty, fuck, mickey, that’s so hot_. 

mickey drops his thighs down to the now-sticky sheets (fuck, he’ll have to do his own laundry now; no way does he want mandy touching his jizzy blankets). he’s worn out and fucked out, come drying on his bare skin and sweat running in droplets down his forehead. 

ian’s making a lot of noise, now, saying mickey’s name over and over again, and mickey knows when he comes because he sort of squeals, like a pig or a girl. it’s hot. 

“fuck.” mickey murmurs, because his brain is devoid of all other vocabulary. “come home.” he can hear ian shuffling, probably pulling up his pants and wiping spunk off the floor. god. mickey hopes no one ever takes a blacklight in there. 

“soon.” ian says. he sounds as tired as mickey feels, but sated, good. “really soon.” mickey thinks they might have different definitions of what constitutes _really_ , but he doesn’t argue it. 

“you should probably go to bed, huh?” mickey’s too exhausted to bother wiping himself off, even though the wet spots on his skin are getting uncomfortable.

“yeah.” ian responds, still breathing kind of funny and heavy. “they get us up at seven thirty on weekends, which is in...” he must be checking his dumb nerd watch, “an hour.” ian’s two hours ahead of mickey, then. he’s a long way from home. it’s shitty. 

“get some sleep.” mickey says, because he cares about gallagher, damnit. ian chuckles into the phone. 

“you too, okay?” mickey doesn’t need to be told twice. he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to run a washcloth over himself and get a pair of underwear on before he passes out. 

“i will.” he doesn’t want to hang up. “you should go.” ian breathes out. it sounds like going home. 

“don’t wanna.” ian’s voice makes mickey bite his bottom lip. 

“yeah.” 

“okay,” ian sounds resigned, which makes mickey’s chest squeeze, “goodnight, mick. i’ll call sometime, okay?” 

“wait, ian?” mickey’s unsure of whether he should ask this. “why didn’t you call before?” ian blows air out through his teeth in a squeaky whistle. 

“you... didn’t write me back. i didn’t know if you wanted to talk.”

“oh.” mickey hasn’t felt this guilty since he accidentally left the stove on two years ago and mandy burnt her whole forearm in it. “i’m sorry.” he doesn’t know what else to say.

“i’m sorry too.” gallagher murmurs, and that’s that. “i should go.”

“okay.”

“okay.”

“alright.” mickey’s voice cracks on the second syllable and he almost punches himself.

“talk soon.” ian says, voice faint like he’s pulled the phone away from his ear, and the line disconnects.

mickey takes a fast, cold shower and pulls on a pair of boxers that smell clean enough. he doesn’t cry while he lays there alone in his still-too-bright room, but it’s sort of a close thing.

**Author's Note:**

> well, that’s that. y’all already know how i feel about comments (hint: very good). 
> 
> also! email me! about anything!! cfgwrites@gmail.com


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